


Like Pulling Teeth

by stitchy



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst and Humor, Closeted Character, First Kiss, Fix it AU, Flashbacks, Getting Together, M/M, Mid-Canon, More references to dentistry than you can shake a stick at, POV Eddie Kaspbrak, Post-Canon, Theatre Kid Richie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 11:34:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21098810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: “Jesus Christ,” Eddie muttered. Maybe there was a curling iron around here somewhere he could electrocute himself with. He scrounged a few safety pins from the counter and passed them to Bev without looking directly at Richie. He knew he was being a little bitch, but he could not let on how jealous he was. Their friendship barely survived the Christmas Richie got a Sega.-In which Eddie mistakes wanting to be ON Richie for wanting to BE Richie -





	Like Pulling Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Damn Stitchy, back at it again with an oddly themed It fic!
> 
> Required reading: If you are not familiar with Little Shop of Horrors, at least [youtube Steve Martin's song "Be A Dentist"](http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOtMizMQ6oM/)\- you won't regret it.

There was still a plastic taste in Eddie’s mouth when he was ushered back to the mint green waiting room. It would be a little while until Mommy’s appointment was over and they could go home. Clutching his new toothbrush, he headed back to the corner full of magazines and a few toys in the hopes he could find a word search that hadn’t already been done. He carefully skirted around the construction project another boy had going that stretched from the top of one chair all the way down to the floor, hoping not to be noticed. Fortunately, the ramp the other boy was building for his matchbox cars was mostly made of boring golf magazines, so Eddie nabbed a promisingly fresh _ Highlights _ and tiptoed away.

“Hey!” said the boy, as soon as he turned his back. Eddie jumped and turned around, coming face to face with a pair of cartoonishly thick glasses. “You wanna race?” asked the boy, holding up two cars. He smiled hopefully at Eddie and offered out the yellow one- his favorite color. How could he resist?

“Ok. You waiting for your mom too?” Eddie took the car and waited as the boy rearranged the chairs on either side of his ramp as though he owned the place.

“Nah, this is my dad’s office.”

Well that explained that. “Your dad’s the dentist? He said I only have decision teeth.”

The boy screwed up his face at Eddie like he had two heads. “He said _ what_?”

Eddie hooked his fingers into his bottom lip to demonstrate. “I’ve only got the baby ones,” he said, pointing to the two fang teeth on either side. “My mommy brought me in because it was weird I didn’t lose them yet.”

Recognition dawned in the boy’s magnified eyes. “Ohhh, you mean _ deciduous _ teeth. That _ is _ weird,” he said, but instead of shying away, the boy leaned in to inspect Eddie more closely. “My dad says that’s a mutation, sometimes. Like an X-Men.”

“He didn’t tell me I was an X-Men,” Eddie snapped, pulling his fingers out of his mouth. “He said I shouldn’t ever chew gum or drink soda so I can keep my teeth until I’m forty.” Not that Mommy let him have sugary things to begin with, but now she had the added authority of a doctor.

“No soda until you’re forty! Holy smokes,” the boy whistled. He stuck his hand out. “My name’s Richie. I’m not allowed gum either.”

“I’m Eddie. You’re in Mr. Frink’s class, aren’t you?”

“More like Mr. Stink, amirite?”

Eddie covered a snicker. With the formalities out of the way, they set off racing- winning, losing, and tying in turns, until a runaway car zoomed across the room and under one of the couches. Eddie immediately dove after it. He had _ just _ made this new friend, he couldn’t go losing the car Richie had loaned him! Risking an unsavory run in with dust bunnies, he stuck his scrawny arms underneath to find it, but slapped something flatter and smaller first.

“A quarter!” he exclaimed, pulling it out.

Richie rushed over, digging in his own pockets. “I’ve got one too! You know what that means?!” He checked over his shoulder to make sure the receptionist wasn’t paying attention, but she had already vanished to go do some filing. “We could use _ the vending machines_,” Richie whispered excitedly.

Before Eddie could find the lost matchbox car, Richie hauled him up by the elbow and dragged him to the exit. 

“We can’t go outside!” Eddie protested. “I’m supposed to wait right here for-“

Undeterred, Richie pushed him out and through the lobby to the main door of the building. “Never fear, my dear!” he said in a silly voice. It sounded like a black and white movie. “We’re not even gonna leave the sidewalk.”

Richie charged ahead like he knew exactly where he was going, and Eddie would rather not be caught disobeying _alone_, so he followed him as he ducked around the side of the building. Although all the windows were frosted, he eyed them nervously, like his mother might suddenly throw one open and catch him wandering around so close to a busy street. Not that he was stupid enough to try and cross it without looking both ways or finding a light! He wasn’t a baby, no matter how she treated him. Up ahead, Richie took an impressive running leap onto a discarded soda can, flattening it into the pavement with a satisfying crunch. He certainly didn’t want _ Richie _ to think he was a baby- so he lifted his chin and hurried along behind him, around the back where there was a parking lot.

“Eddie! C’mere.” Richie waved him over to a pair of vending machines, grinning wide and pointing into the glass full of snacks. “It has gum!”

They were thick as thieves from then on, meeting up on the school playground, splitting secret sodas, and double dog daring each other to pull stunts they kinda sorta wanted to pull anyway. In gym class when they were picked last due to Eddie’s notorious asthma and Richie’s glasses, they made perfect partners. Eddie backed Richie up when other kids picked on him, and Richie gave Eddie cutesy nicknames that he pretended not to like. It was just right.

-

As Eddie crosses the waiting room he suddenly remembers the first time he ever came here so forcefully that he trips, anticipating a toy car whizzing past him. It’s just a memory, he reminds himself, and shakes it off. He’s so fucking sick of this blast from the past business. He had hoped when they finally put down Pennywise once and for all that not only would the fear go, but the forgetting, too. No such luck.

This dental practice has been sold a few times since Dr. Tozier’s day, no doubt. All the furniture is updated and the counter where the receptionist once sat has been remodeled into a wall with a little sliding window next to a tv, but the frosted windows are still intact and somehow the green paint is the same. It might make him venture a smile if his left cheek wasn’t so sore from being poked and prodded all morning. He’d forgotten about it, in the sewers. He forgot about it while the Losers escaped Neibolt, and while they loaded a bleeding, broken Richie into the back of Mike’s car. How could he spare a thought for anything but the flickering feel of his best friend's life growing weaker and weaker under his fingers? It wasn’t until the hospital when they took him away for surgery that one of the nurses forced a clipboard into Eddie’s hands.

“You should get that looked at, sir.”

“But he-”

“He’ll be a few hours.”

While he waited, someone from Plastics patched up his cheek and prescribed an antibiotic, but no one was willing to touch the damage that Bowers’ knife had done to his teeth. It wasn’t so catastrophic that he couldn’t wait and follow up with his dentist in New York, of course, but leaving Richie and the rest of the Losers behind in Derry was unthinkable at the moment, so he took the local referral. 

He passes a x-ray and some paperwork through the window to the receptionist. He half expects to see Richie’s older sister still working the desk, but instead it’s just some nondescript woman with about six lanyards around her neck.

“There was a cancellation, we should be able to get you right in.”

“Thanks,” he mutters, taking the clipboard she offers and finding a seat.

He checks boxes faster than QA at an Amazon plant. No tobacco, no controlled substances. Allergic to sulfa drugs and nickel. History of asthma and sinus trouble. Then the namby pamby questions. Does he like his smile? He tries to think back to the last time he saw a picture of himself he liked, or had been so incandescently happy that he caught himself smiling in the mirror. Maybe in the bathroom at Jade of the Orient, right between suddenly having his old life back but before the fortune cookie incident. _ Yes, _he ticks the box. That grin had been a pretty good one. When he gets to the bottom, the line asking who to contact in the event he is too medicated to drive himself trips him up. The person he most wishes would come is out of commission because Eddie utterly failed to protect him. Bill (who would probably yell at him again), Mike and Ben had all stormed ahead when the got to the Neibolt house, rather than take a moment to stash their phones in the mailbox like Eddie did before going sewer spelunking. So they weren’t reachable. Beverly would come through, though.

With a final stroke of the pen, Eddie signs the waiver just as the door to the exam rooms opens.

“Mr. Kaspbrak, you can come back now.”

Eddie follows the receptionist into the closest room and lowers himself into the chair, only just now starting to feel apprehensive. Usually he feels perfectly at home with a dentist, but this feeling is sneaking up on him like he’s forgetting something important or he’s going to be found out. Found out about _ what,_ he doesn’t know.

He spooks when Dr. Miller steps in and introduces herself. Luckily, she’s got a schedule to keep and doesn’t make him go through how he came by a knife wound to the face all over again. She snaps on some gloves and has Eddie open up.

“This looks like it hurt,” she says, a little surprised at the damage. There’s a click and then a whooshing sound as she places a suction tube in his mouth. “They got your cheek in the ER, but you’re definitely still bleeding from the laceration in the gums. I can put a stitch in that. Hmmm.” Dr. Miller wipes her exam mirror and then goes back to look around some more. “Tsk. Yeah. I didn’t love the look of this crack on the X-ray. I hoped we could get away with just bonding your bicuspid, but now that I’m seeing exposed pulp...”

A little voice sings in his head,_ I thrill when I drill a bicuspid! _

Eddie’s not really sure where that came from. He swallows and tries to speak, as far as that’s possible. “Oo you ave oo ull ih?”

“Do I have to pull it?”

“Uh huh.” Better start psyching himself up now.  
  
He can’t see the doctor’s mouth through her facemask of course, but her eyes crinkle in an apologetic smile. “Yes. Sorry about that. But pink, healthy gums like yours? You should heal up nicely.” She touches the teeth on either side on his broken one with her little pick. “I might recommend a bridge, but you’ve taken such good care of the rest, it’d be a shame. You’ll do better with an implant. We can extract, avoid infection for now, and then in a few weeks when your cheek is healed up the cap should be ready. Okay?”

He gives her a thumbs up. Better to just get it over with.

“Okay. We’re gonna get you all fixed up. No problem,” Dr. Miller says lightly.

Eddie’s eyes start to water as he stares at a crack in the ceiling. It wasn’t fair that he’ll be in and out of here in under an hour. He’s such a fucking coward, he doesn’t deserve the easy _ ‘no problem_’ injury while Richie, who is so much braver, will be in recovery for days and weeks if he makes it through at all.

The doctor swings around a second tool tray with some medieval looking implements and Eddie resolutely does not think about them. She positions a mask on his face and leans in to speak to him again. “I can do this with a local but it will make you loopy, so you’re gonna need someone to pick you up after. You’ve got someone on your file for that, right? Reception will give them a call.”

Eddie nods faintly. Bev will come get him.

-

It was surreal to be at school on a Saturday, and if it wasn’t already weird enough that the place was empty, Eddie was wandering in an area he never really went during the week. The hallway that wrapped around the back of the auditorium was mostly populated with music rooms, and he didn’t play an instrument. The Class of ‘94 mural was dotted with flyers for _ Little Shop of Horrors_, the spring musical, though, so it seemed like a good bet. Without much else to guide him, he listened for any familiar voices, and sure enough, he knew he was on the right track when he heard Bev.

“That’s what the talcum powder is for!” she giggled, just beyond a door that was half opened.

Eddie peeked in. He had always assumed this room was a janitor’s closet or something, but inside was a long vanity counter lined in big, bare lightbulbs, an immense chest of drawers, a curtain, and a rolling rack of clothing. It was a dressing room, he realized. Bev was sitting in front of the mirrors with about a dozen little piles of small costume pieces laid out before her as she scribbled names on pieces of tape. He knocked on the door before pushing it the rest of the way open.

“Hey, Bev. Have you seen Richie?”

He was _ always _ looking around for Richie these days. Senior year was mind numbingly slow with them in entirely different classes. During the school day he really only saw Richie in Homeroom- which Richie generally slept through if he bothered to show at all. It was hard to blame the guy, though- he was putting in long hours at rehearsal, which ran more often and even later than most after school jobs. Eddie briefly tried Tech Crew to show moral support, but thought better of it when a full forty minutes of scrubbing his fingernails still resulted in Richie dubbing him Edward Glitter Hands. _ Whatever_. Their lame-o school was going to rent the Audrey II puppets rather than build them, and all the paint fumes were probably going to give him square babies or some shit, anyway. It was no big loss as far as Eddie’s need for a creative outlet went, but he was (though he would never _ say _ it) lonely without his usual partner in crime.

Bev looked up in surprise at his reflection in the mirror. “Eddie!”

He frowned. “He called and said we could meet up after his fitting since they’re only running Act II today.” Richie’s character was dead by intermission, which Eddie had been assured made it a ‘money role’. “I don’t know where that’s happening...”

“Yeah, yeah!” came Richie’s voice from behind the curtain Eddie had mistaken for a closet. “Keep your shirt on, Kaspbrak, I’m still trying to squeeze my hog into these fucking sausage skins Bev is calling pants.”

“Suck it in, Tozier!” she hollered back, rolling her eyes. “You boys and your baggy pants.”

Eddie sheepishly hiked his jeans and stepped into the dressing room. Peering over Bev’s shoulder he noticed that there were ziplocks for each character under her little piles. Lisa/Ronette had a few necklaces, a little white pair of gloves and a lipstick, while Jake/Mushnik had a fake moustache and a tie, and Richie/Orin had just a jar of pomade. “You’re very organized,” he complimented Bev. He picked up a pair of glasses with empty frames and checked himself out in the mirror.

Bev pinched a loudly printed shirt that had been tossed over a nearby chair between two fingers. “You just need this and you could steal Richie’s identity,” she said with a smirk.

Curtain rings screeched across a metal rod, and Richie stepped out. “But then who’d be little Mr. Wet Blanket?”

Eddie swung around to tell him off but as soon as his eyes fell on Richie he lost his train of thought entirely. “Shit,” he breathed.

Richie had said something about having to get a haircut for the show, but Eddie hadn’t bothered to imagine how getting his shaggy ‘do off his neck would make Richie’s jaw look...like that. Like a- like a handsome... man. And the fresh leather jacket over a clean white top instead of some tropical eyesore of a shirt!? And then there were the definitely too tight leather pants. Holy fucking shit, Bev! Was she _ trying _ to make Eddie wonder about Richie’s-

Eddie fumbled the glasses off his face in case this was some sort of _ They Live _ scenario, except instead of glasses that showed you how everyone was secretly an alien, your best friend was revealed to be a super stud. Eddie could feel his face go flush. This was infuriating! Why couldn’t _ he _ be tall and and fill out a shoulder like that. What the fuck!? In ten years, he’d never seen Richie eat a vegetable that wasn’t generously doused in mustard first. Unbelievable. And why should someone with such a great sense of humor get to be so fantastic looking! Wasn’t _ ‘Oh, but he has a great personality’ _ supposed to be the saving grace of the fuck uglies of the world?

“H-how do I look, Eds?” Richie asked in an Elvis-like voice, swiveling his hips. “Like a hunka-hunka burnin’ love?” The shuffle of his engineer boots drew him closer to Eddie. His mouth was too dry to respond.

“Hot!” Bev confirmed instead, standing up to take a look. “Eddie, hand me a couple safety pins.”

Richie licked the tip of his finger and sizzled it on his ass.

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie muttered. Maybe there was a curling iron around here somewhere he could electrocute himself with. He scrounged a few pins from the counter and passed them to Bev without looking directly at Richie. He knew he was being a little bitch, but he could _ not _ let on how jealous he was. Their friendship barely survived the Christmas Richie got a Sega.

“I think we could stand to move the buttons on the smock,” said Bev, taking a pin. “Take off the jacket for me.”

“Ch ch ch chh!” Richie shimmied his shoulders until the jacket dropped down his arms, revealing the old fashioned dentist’s smock underneath. “Eddie, you’re missing it-”

Eddie was staring at his feet. “I don’t wanna watch you do a fuckin striptease, Rich.” His feelings of inadequacy were already cranked all the way up, thanks.

“You don’t know what your missing,” Bev laughed.

Eddie settled on watching in the mirror as Bev pulled the smock tighter across Richie’s chest and marked the overlap with a pin. Eddie chewed on his lip and held out a second pin. If it _ was _ a striptease, weren’t the rules to look and _ not touch?_

“Are we done here?” Eddie asked, handing Bev a third pin.

She raised an eyebrow at Richie. “I dunno, _ are _ you done flirting?”

“For now,” Richie sighed.

That made Eddie’s head spin. What ever happened to Ben-Bev-Bill love triangle!? Since when was Richie barking up the Bev tree too? She was a cool girl and all, but he would think the competition might ward Richie off. Richie never liked girls who were popular like that. He hung around the unobtainable weirdo art girls who wore Birkenstocks and were too busy drawing each other in their sketchbooks to date.

“I’ll wait... outside.” Eddie put down the rest of the pins on the counter and creeped out the dressing room door before he could see something he didn’t want to see.

When Richie reemerged a minute or two later in his own clothes, Eddie tried not to notice that his stomach flipped just the same as it had before. To avoid having to dwell on this information, he suggested they go check out what was playing at the second-run movie theater. It was probably some crappy Spaghetti Western, but at least then they’d be guaranteed a break from looking at each other.

That was the theory anyway. Throughout their merciless mocking of a John Wayne double feature, Eddie kept catching himself staring at Richie, wondering why a little thing like a haircut had put him so on edge. After the movies, he put up a token resistance to getting burgers, citing the homework that both he and Richie had yet to complete, but broke down when Richie offered to buy him a shake and let him rant about the Cartesian circle. Damn if that boy didn’t know exactly how to push his buttons.

“Well, thanks Eds,” said Richie as they walked each other back to the neighborhood. They were just a block shy of his house. “My actual homework can’t possibly be as boring as dinner. I’ll be so stoked on it, it’ll be a total cakewalk!”

“You get the math,” Eddie grumbled. “You’re just not turning in your homework, numbnuts.”

Richie shrugged at him. “It’s not like I’m ever gonna use any of this. The most math I do in real life is for the final wager in Nintendo Jeopardy.”

“I guess.”

Eddie wasn’t sure exactly what Richie planned on doing after high school, but he was confident it wasn’t engineering. Something where the main qualification was running his mouth, surely. He liked to imagine Richie soaking up the spotlight, making people laugh. Maybe Eddie would be there too, glaring at him from the sidelines, unimpressed. Someone had to keep Richie’s ego in check.

“Tech week is gonna kill me. If I manage to turn in anything, it’ll be because the little Eddie in the back of my mind is cracking the fucking whip.” Richie snapped his wrist in the air.

“It’s just another week though, right? Then the show will be up. After, I can try and catch you up for the last quarter. Is it just math that’s kicking your ass or-”

“Oh fuck.” Richie stopped in the middle of the street and groaned up at the dusky sky. “I forgot I have to actually do the show in front of an audience.”

Eddie stopped, too. “What’s the difference? You’re always goofing off in front of people. It’s just that this time they’re handing out a program beforehand.”

Richie flung his arms out. “Exactly what I need! A paper trail with my fucking name printed on it when people wonder who that total dickhead playing the dentist was!” He dropped his chin again to look at Eddie, anxiety plain on his face.

It wasn’t often that Richie let his nerves get the better of him, so this was sort of alarming. If the shameless Richie Tozier couldn’t nut up, what hope was there for mere mortals? Eddie couldn’t let that stand.

“Or-” he ventured. “It’s a souvenir for the people like me who already know you’re a total dickhead.” He grinned at Richie. 

A little smile quirked Richie’s mouth before he turned to start walking again. He elbowed Eddie. “Thanks for the support, asshole.”

Eddie jogged to catch up with Richie’s enviably long legs. Seriously, fuck this lawn flamingo motherfucker. “No problem. Hey- what night do you want me to come see you?” Eddie covered with a cough. “See _ the play._” Making the distinction felt very important.

“You can come every night, Eds. That way there’ll always be at least one person clapping for me at curtain call.” Richie winked at him.

“I do have homework, you know. Some of us actually give a shit about our grades,” Eddie reminded him.

“Closing night then,” Richie decided. “And I’ll take you to the cast party.”

“Cool,” Eddie nodded. They were in front of Richie’s house now, but he didn’t really want to say goodbye. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he wound up mirroring Richie, sticking them into his pockets. “If you need any pointers on the homework, you can call.”

“That’d give your mom a thrill, huh? Oh, Mrs. K, I didn’t expect _ you _ to pick up the phone. I was _ just _thinking about you-”

“Fuck off!”

“-_ In bed_.”

“Shuttup!”

“Make me!” Richie growled.

Eddie sneered. “I have an essay to write, I don’t wanna break my fist on your stupid face!” They both knew he didn’t throw punches for these sorts of remarks anymore. He just squared up a foot in front of Richie, hands clenched in his pockets. He meant to stare him down, but got distracted again by how unexpectedly good Richie’s jawline looked with his new haircut. Eddie wished he looked that good, ever.

Richie cleared his throat and Eddie snapped out of it. “Earth to Kaspbrak. Whaddaya want, a goodnight kiss? I can ask my mom-”

“Ugh.” Eddie stepped off the curb back into the street. “G’night ya slimeball.”

“Aw, baby, don’t go to bed angry!” Richie called after him as he walked away.

“I hate you!” He stuck one hand in the air and gave Richie the finger.

“That’s what makes the sex so hot!”

He should bring some rotten tomatoes and straight up fucking boo Richie at the show. That’d show him.

By the time Eddie made it home and back to his room, he cooled off. Made some headway on his essay. Finished his reading. Prepped some flashcards in case Richie had time to study... Reprimanded himself for getting off track wondering if Richie would call, or if he ought to call first with some invented question so that he wouldn’t be embarrassed to ask Eddie for extra help. Ultimately, he settled for stretching the spiral out of the phone cord by pulling the kitchen phone into his room. Just in case.

He was disappointed but not surprised when there was no time to get together and study, in the coming week. Tech rehearsals were just as deadly as Richie had predicted. On one of Eddie’s bloodynosed trips to the school nurse, he counted no less than three actors either napping or gargling salt water for their sore throats- and his mother warned him that contact sports were too physically taxing! Since Richie was mostly comatose in Homeroom, the next time Eddie really heard from him was when he roared onto the stage of Derry High on a prop motorcycle.

There was no denying how fucking rad it looked but_ , I would kill him_, Eddie thought when Richie rode in. _ I would absolutely kill him if he really rode a bike and snapped his neck before I got a chance to- _

To what?

_ Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Jesus Fucking Christ on a frozen flaming pile of shit. _

Eddie gulped. He didn’t want to _ be _ Richie. He didn’t want to have Richie’s body and his hair and quick tongue. He wanted to throw himself at it all and touch it with _ his _ body and tongue. Like, in a definitely horny, not remotely friendly, very fucking gay sort of way.

As he was sitting between one of the especially frail school librarians and a girl who had her backpack stuck in the narrow aisle between the rows of auditorium seats, there was no making a stealthy escape to the bathroom or the nearest dumpster _ where he belonged._ He was going to have to sit there and process this brand spanking new information about himself out here in the open where God and the rented Audrey II puppet could see him.

_ Feed me feed me feed me_, sang the man eating plant. _ You know the kinda eats, the kinda red-hot treats, the kinda sticky licky sweets I crave. _

When intermission finally came and Eddie looked down at the program in his hands, it had been folded so many times into such a tight wad that he could probably dry swallow it. He considered leaving while everyone was out of their seats. He could call Richie’s house and leave a message that he broke out in shingles and please _ do not _ come to check on that alibi. That would buy him a couple days. _ But_, he knew Richie wouldn’t be in the second half of the show and it was so much easier to _ not _ move when his body was still in shock from head to Keds.

So he didn’t leave. He even sort of enjoyed the brutal pessimism of the finale, as the evil plant succeeded in its bid to devour Earth and confetti cannons pollinated the audience. It made him glad he had quit Tech Crew or else he’d be here all night, sweeping.

At curtain call, he knew he couldn’t just bail. He was only three rows back and Richie definitely saw him. Shot fingerguns at him, even. He would have to make an appearance and congratulate Richie on the show and then make his excuses and ditch on the cast party. No biggie, right? If he could fight a sewer clown, he could stand in front of someone he had major hots for and nod his head a few times.

By the time Eddie spotted Richie in the hubbub of the back hallway, he wasn’t sure who was sweating more. Unfortunately _ he _ didn’t have the excuse of dancing around under stage lights. He flagged Richie down with a stiff wave of his arm. He had already changed back into his street clothes, and was fanning the neck of his t-shirt. _ That neck._ Yep. Good to check in. Eddie still wanted to crawl inside Richie’s stupid pineapple button down with him, wrap his arms around him and plunge his hands into his back pockets and grab-

“How was it?” Richie beamed at him. With the wattage of his smile they could have just tied Richie to the rafters and have him light the stage.

Eddie nodded vigorously, according to plan. “It was good!”

“Good! Three months of bruises from rehearsing knee-slides and a D in Pre-Calc and I was ‘good’, thank fucking God. What a pay off.”

Okay, okay- Eddie was going to have to risk being slightly more effusive than that. “I mean, Derry High isn’t exactly gonna qualify for the Tonys! But you looked-” he stops himself. “_You _ were really great! Your scenes were the best. What? You want me to give you a fucking handjob about it?” _ Not that effusive! _

Richie’s mouth hung open for a second too long, allowing Eddie to hope he hadn’t been heard. “I think flowers are traditional, but I’m not against it.”

Suddenly there was an arm slung around Eddie’s waist, and he nearly dropped to the floor before he realized it was Bev. “Hi Eddie!” Just as quick, she slipped away and jumped up at Richie and smacked his cheek with a wet kiss. “Hey there, hunk! Great job! See ya at the party?”

“You’re coming?” Richie asked.

“After strike!”

“Aw fuck. Right. That reminds me.”

Right. It didn’t really matter what the hell kind of awakening was going on in Eddie’s brain. Richie already had something going on with Bev. Maybe this was the time to call it a night. Eddie opened his mouth to interrupt.

“Beverly! Help!” Nearby a distressed actress was struggling to remove her wig. 

Bev squeezed Eddie’s arm. “See ya later!”

“Oh! Uh, good show, Bev!”

Richie put his arm around Eddie’s shoulder to pull him closer, that he might be heard over the celebratory woohooing of the cast and crew. “Eds, can you help me muscle the dentist’s chair into the car? I got my dad to lend it to the show but he wants it back ASAP.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course, dude,” Eddie automatically agreed. Once it was done and they were in the parking lot he could just dip.

“Sweet. C’mon, let’s get rolling while the night is young!” said Richie, keeping his arm around Eddie’s shoulders and steering him towards the back door of the auditorium. “Sooner we get the chair, sooner we can hit the cast party. You haven’t partied til you’ve been to a cast party.”

Eddie plastered an _ I’m Okay With This _ look on his face and tripped along past the people still running around backstage. Just a few paces in, the dentist’s chair was wedged between a flat and medium-sized Audrey II puppet. Richie squeezed around behind it and grabbed the bottom end, so Eddie took the head.

“One, two- oh, that’s not as heavy as I thought.”

“It’s just awkward,” Richie said, hoisting the chair. Oh, he had _ no idea_.

They backed out the stage door and down the hallway in the direction of the student parking lot. Luckily the crowd was thinner in that direction.

“So what happens at a cast party that makes it so special?” Eddie asked, to clutter his brain with literally any thought that wasn’t _ arms arms arms look at those arms. _

“Uh, people drink. Sing show tunes at each other, then hook up. So dust off your _ Music Man_, Eds. You never know.” Richie waggled his eyebrows.

Somehow Eddie doubted anyone had ever gotten lucky on the seductive strength of _ Seventy-Six Trombones_. Then again, he had only ever kissed Bev (on a dare), so he clearly didn’t know how these things worked and would have to take Richie’s word for it. “Are you gonna, uhm, sing at Bev?” he asked. It was less excruciating to put it out there than to let the idea fester and grow in his head like a tumor.

Richie dropped his end of the chair with a painful _ thunk_. “What? Haha. Absofuckin’lutely not. I am all good with the number of times Bill has punched me in the face remaining exactly where it’s at.” A little off balance, he swerved on one foot to turn and open the exit door. He rattled it by the crash bar a few times until it stuck open.

“Oh. Good. Right. Don’t mack on other guy’s chicks.” Eddie breathed a sigh of relief.

The chair weighed practically nothing after that. Eddie offered to be the one to go backwards all the way to the car, and was even a little sorry their jaunt was over when he saw the familiar blue bumper of Dr. Tozier’s Cadillac. When it was loaded into the trunk, Richie wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand and said- “Alright, Eddie Spaghetti, let’s amscray.”

So Eddie obediently slid into the passenger side and buckled his seatbelt before he knew what he was doing. So much for sneaking off early.

Richie climbed in beside him and fished around his pockets before starting up. “Gum?”

Smirking, Eddie refused. “No thanks, I promised your dad I’d actually give it up.”

“That’s _ so _ cute,” Richie cooed. “But you’re a total kissass.”

“Because I want my best friend’s dad not to hate me!?” Especially if he was riding in the dude’s car! It was like he would psychometrically know what Eddie had done.

Richie popped two sticks into his mouth and tossed the wrappers to the floor where Dr. Tozier would definitely see them. “Isn’t it enough you’re always putting the moves on my mom? Now you’re trying to fuck my dad too?”

“I’m ambitious. It's why your parents like me better than you.”

“Fuck you,” Richie laughed, buckling in.

“I’m just saying, maybe you should try flossing as foreplay.”

“I floss!” Richie said defensively. As he started the car and flipped on the headlights he gave Eddie a sidelong look. “Mmm mmm, so fresh, so minty, Eds. Look what you’re missing out on,” he chewed with his mouth obnoxiously open. Eddie could smell the spearmint.

“I know, I know. Blow a bubble for me, will you?”

Because Richie was a disgusting, delightful boy, he did so and bit it off at the end, pinching it at the chew. He held it out to Eddie. “Eh?”

“God so help me, Richie Tozier, if you do not put that back in your mouth.”

Why was he into this guy? If he had to suddenly want to bone a dude, why couldn’t it be someone suave like Patrick Swayze _ who he was just realizing he’d always had a thing for, oh sweet shitting Jesus. _

Richie put the gum in his mouth again and put his arm around the back of Eddie’s headrest to back out. “You know, my dad’s office is on the way to the party. We could drop the chair off and save me a trip tomorrow morning.”

“Sure.” 

Now that Eddie was accidentally on his route to what was apparently a hook up party with someone who, until an hour ago he had not considered a romantic option, he could use a little detour to collect himself.

Once they hit the road, Richie turned on the stereo. In much the same way that the tape deck in Eddie’s mother’s car was in an exclusive relationship with Barry Manilow, Dr. Tozier’s car had long been an All Billy Joel All The Time zone, (save for a torrid affair with Van Morrison in the summer of ‘91). They didn’t bother to switch to the radio instead of the tape, and this wasn't really remarkable until _ Easy Money _ gave way to a streak of songs appropriate for rounding some bases in the backseat. Eddie locked his eyes dead ahead and thought about prime numbers. _ Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen_...

When they pulled into the lot behind the dentist’s office, Richie left the car running and the music playing so they could make it quick. He jingled his dad’s keys in the lock of the back door by the vending machines while Eddie looked for something to prop it open. This was a nice enough neck of the woods that there weren’t stray bricks just hanging around, so he made do with a snow boot that had also been in the trunk.

“Good thinking,” said Richie. He followed Eddie back to the trunk of the car and dug around until he got his hands under the chair properly. “Alleyoop!”

“You’re such a dork.” A dork who said ‘alleyoop’ and did school musicals and wore pineapple shirts as though that was regular fare in fucking Maine_. _ A dork that Eddie was realizing he had been crushing on for quite a while, the longer he thought about it. What the fuck was Eddie gonna do about this extreme misfortune?

This time Richie backed into the dark office, navigating them both by the emergency lights. He kicked open an exam room door with his heel and clanked through it roughly. “Okay, I think we’ve done enough damage here,” he said, wincing at a scrape in the paint.

“I didn't see nothin’.” Eddie whistled innocently on their way back toward the car. Billy Joel was still crooning about what a what a romantic night it was, the fucker. “You know,” Eddie grunted, tugging the boot out from the door. “This would be easier if we had a third person to hold open the goddamned door. Why didn’t you ask anyone else to come tonight?

“Isn’t it obvious?” Richie punctuated his question by slamming the trunk shut. He looked at Eddie like he ought to know the answer.

“You want to murder me and feed me to a maneater plant and you know that all our friends would take my side in a deathmatch?”

“Hey, I think at least Stan would back me up after what you did in... _ nevermind_.” Richie shook his head and stepped closer to Eddie. One side of his face was painted in the red of the Cadillac’s tail lights, making him as pink and pretty as a valentine. “I just wanted you all to myself. It feels like I haven’t been able to see you in like, a million years.”

Eddie swallowed hard. He felt the same, but wasn’t sure if that meant for Richie what it meant for him. Did he never get enough even when he got too much? Did he want it _ all_?

“We hung out on Saturday, dude.”

“Still,” Richie said, softer. Eddie thought he looked a little sad. Then Richie squinted at him and stepped even closer, steadying one hand on his arm. His other hand reached up and brushed a few pieces of confetti that were still stuck in Eddie’s hair. “I miss-“

But Eddie had already charted a course when Richie had reached out for him. The moment his lips touched Richie’s he knew by the shower of little green confetti bits that he had misread the situation- but he also knew he didn’t care. He was kissing Richie and all the mental gymnastics he’d been doing tumbled to a halt. It was just right, even if it was only for a moment. His heart struck up in one shattering, beautiful note like an orchestra before he could stop himself. But he did stop himself.

“Shit. Sorry.” Eddie jumped back, tripping over the curb and cornering himself with his back against the vending machine. “I- I thought-“_ I thought maybe you wanted it all, too! _

“Uh-“

He glanced at Richie, who looked stunned for a moment and then spat out his gum. Eddie’s heart dropped to somewhere around his knees. For once, he’d managed to disgust Richie instead of the other way around. What a way to end a friendship.

“I can walk home!” Eddie plunged his hands into his pockets. They were starting to shake and he couldn’t bear to let Richie see. He tried to duck past him, but Richie stepped up onto the sidewalk, too.

“No! No. Eds, Eddie.” Richie lifted his hand again and this time- curled it around the back of Eddie’s neck. He swooped down in a wave of pomade and mint and laid a kiss on Eddie’s frowning mouth. 

Gravity reversed itself. Eddie’s hair stood on end and he couldn’t feel his feet on the pavement. For a moment, he could have sworn the confetti on the ground swirled up around them. Thinking fast, he slid his arms around Richie’s waist before they could float apart. He just had to hold on, and they’d be together no matter what.

Richie seemed to have no objection to the way Eddie’s fingers dug into his back. His lips were fused to Eddie’s like he too feared breaking the connection. A peek of tongue dipped from one mouth into the other- it was impossible to say who’s- and traced the edge of teeth. With the burst of flavor, Eddie knew why Richie had offered him gum, the premeditating little shit. He probably planned it all. The party invite, the music, the quiet detour to the place they’d first met...

“Hang on,” Eddie said, breaking apart. “Your dad would have had the chair in the trunk when he drove to work in the morning. We didn’t need to-“

“Shh,” said Richie, stoppering him with another kiss. “Don’t overthink it.”

“I think you’re trying to fucking make it with me in the back of the car instead of going to the party!”

Richie’s eyes darted suspiciously. “No way!”

“Uh huh.”

“Well yeah, okay. But we can do _ both_,” Richie cleared his throat. “I am very thirsty from the show, and there’s supposed to be a keg-“

“If anything, that’ll dehydrate you, horndog.” Eddie’s hands dropped from Richie’s waist to his hip and he felt around for his wallet. He found it in Richie’s back pocket, pulled it out, and took a dollar bill.

“This is like, exactly why they warn you in health class about cruising dudes in dentist parking lots,” said Richie, watching him feed the dollar into the vending machine. “They’ll touch your dick as a distraction and then steal your money.”

Eddie selected a Lipton iced tea for being the least awful for you, grumbling. “I didn’t touch your dick.”

“Yet!” Richie crossed his fingers on both hands.

The bottle dropped to the bottom of the machine in time with Eddie’s realization that he did really _ really _ want that. God, his mouth had never been so dry, and he had been on every sinus reliever on the market. He unscrewed the cap and took a swig before handing the rest to Richie.

“Drink. If you pass out on top of me I’ll kick your ass.”

“That too! Strange, sexy men will blow you then beat you up!” Richie joked.

Eddie didn’t laugh, not because it wasn’t a quick enough turnabout, but because it made his chest squeeze painfully. Clearly this was something Richie had given consideration. Putting yourself on the line was risky. Derry wasn’t the kindest town to guys like them. How long had Richie been on guard, hiding himself behind a foul mouth and waiting around for Eddie? What if he’d never woken up and realized that they were pining for each other all this time? He couldn’t let Richie go on worrying and second guessing himself- that was _ his _ schtick.

He waited until Richie had chugged the bottle, then he laid his hands on either side of his face. Richie looked down at him, his face as open and vulnerable as the little boy he’d been when they first met. “I’m not strange, and I won’t hurt you,” Eddie promised. “I know you and you know me and I- I love you! Okay?”

He watched Richie’s lips move as he internalized this, mouthing _ You love me _ at least twice. It was beautiful, like watching the stars come out and shine, one by one, word by word. _ You. Love. Me. _

“I do, too. Love _ you_. Not me. Fuck, I mean, _ I’m all right_\- but you’re-“

Eddie kissed him again and didn’t stop until Richie’s back hit the vending machine. It flickered and the cooling unit inside hummed threateningly.

“Backseat?”

“Backseat.”

-

Dr. Miller hands Eddie a kleenex after the extraction and he realizes there are tears rolling down his cheek into his bandage. She lowers her mask to her neck and gives him a tight, professional smile. “Beverly is here to take you home.”

He tries to say thank you, but he’s groggy and his mouth feels wooly and slow. There’s a bit of gauze stuck between his teeth that he tries to fish out.

“Leave that be for half an hour, okay? All right.”

Eddie is lead back to the waiting room, where Bev stands with a bunch of papers rolled in one hand.

“Thanks,” she says to the doctor, taking over. She loops her arm into Eddie’s and checks him over. “How you feeling, buddy?”

“Like I’m the shittiest person in the world,” he says, a bit too honestly.

Bev nudges him towards the door. “Sounds like you need a nap. Let’s get you back to the Townhouse.” The bright light of the outside world is a bit much. Eddie winces and Bev stops again. “I can pull the car up?”

“No!” He has to- he has to do something first. “I can walk to the back,” he assures her.

He picks up the pace to prove it, ducking around the side of the building with determination. The hospital was just a few blocks away, so he had walked here, earlier. He didn’t get to see the parking lot behind the building. Now he has to see it for himself to know it was all real.

“Shit.” He stops short of the vending machines. The Pepsi brand casing has been updated since the 90's, of course, but a snack machine is a snack machine. The letters and numbers are still worn off for the second row, where all the best chips are stored at eye level. The crumbling curb he had tripped over after the first time he kissed Richie was still there, too.

Bev touches his arm gently. “We can get you something real to eat, Eddie.” 

He probably shouldn’t or won’t want to eat anything right away. There are instructions about after care on the paperwork in Bev’s hand, undoubtedly. 

“Wait.” Eddie digs his wallet out of his pocket. His hands shake as he thumbs the crease out of some dogeared bills. “It’s not for me.”

Bev sighs and opens the car door for him while he punches in his selection. When he finally gets into the car he sees a glimpse of himself in the visor mirror. His eyes are watery and his face is blotchy. Bev looks at him before she starts the car, eyebrows drawn in a worried peak. “Just relax, everyone’s gonna be okay. They’ll discharge Richie in a few hours and we can all hunker down for a bit.” She pats his knee.

“Do you remember?” Eddie gestures broadly at the parking lot.

“What, honey?”

Of course not. But then he supposes her version of things wasn’t focused where his was. “I forgot,” he says miserably.

“We all did. It’s not your fault.”

“The cast party. Do you remember the party after the musical, senior year?”

"Wow. I guess." Bev smirks. “I’d be surprised if _ you _ did. You and Richie showed up an hour before it was over, then disappeared into the basement the rest of the night.”

It was real. It was all real and there wasn’t a moment to waste because he’s already wasted _ decades_. Eddie looks at this hands in his lap, holding tight to a bottle of iced tea and pack of gum. There’s still a little bit of Richie’s blood crusted under his nails. They’d come so close to wasting their entire _ lives_.

Bev drives to the exit and puts on her turn signal for the wrong direction.

“Bev, we gotta go to the hospital.”

“We’re taking you back to the Townhouse.”

“I need to see Richie.”

“You need rest. It’s just a few hours.”

“Beverly. My face hurts too fucking much to argue with you about this...”

She switches her turn signal.

Thirty minutes later they’ve cleared the admin’s desk, despite the nurse’s valiant attempts to arrange a follow up appointment for Eddie’s injury. Although he is coming out of his fog, he gets a little turned around trying to charge ahead to where he’d last seen Richie in the ER, but Bev reminds him they’ve since moved to the PACU. Mike is standing in the hallway, fiddling with a phone.

“Hey, how’s the face?”

“Still stabbed.”

Bev puts her hand on Eddie’s back comfortingly. “They had to pull the tooth. Is Richie up?”

“Yeah. I asked him if he wanted me to call his parents but he had me update his Facebook instead.” Mike holds out Richie’s phone, where the lastest status reads _ Just polished off a stroll down memory lane with my first ever concussion! At least I think it’s my first... _

Eddie frowns. “He can do better.”

It’s good to see Richie’s making jokes but he needs to actually _ see _ Richie, so he pushes past Mike, then Bill, lingering at the door. Inside the recovery room, Ben is patiently rolling a second pair of socks onto Richie’s feet while his arm is slung to his chest.

“Wait, wait, the toe is twisted. Ben. _ Ben_. Fix it,” he whines, flopping back against the gurney helplessly. He loudly blows his lip at a unruly lock of hair on his forehead, since his relatively good arm is hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor.

Eddie comes up beside the bed and pushes his hair back, tucking it into the bandage wrapped around his head. He fixes the skew of his glasses. “There is no way I was this fucking annoying the summer my arm was broken.”

“No, you were worse,” says Richie. “_Bellyacher_.”

“_Brat_.”

Richie settles back into the pillow with a contented sigh. “Hey Benjamin Button. Can you give us a sec?”

At the foot of the bed, Ben gives up on Richie’s socks. He catches eyes with Bev in the doorway, though, so he doesn’t take the abrupt dismissal too hard. “Just ring the bell if you need anything, man.”

“Already got my bell rung,” Richie crosses his eyes and tilts his head about in a swimmy way. With a clap on Eddie’s shoulder, Ben leaves.

“This is terrible,” says Eddie. Richie blinks at him. “Failure to laugh at a joke is a sign of a concussion. We need to get Ben treatment right away.”

Richie grins at him. “Is that your excuse, too? I didn’t know you were suffering a head injury for our entire lives but it does explain a few things.”

Eddie knuckles away a tear before it can soak his bandage. God, he _ wishes _ he could blame leaving for college and forgetting his hometown boyfriend on a head injury. 

“Eds?”

“Richie... I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Shit got wild down there. I’m all in one... no... ” Richie squints in thought. “Four pieces? They pinned it all together. Whatever.”

“I guess the painkillers are pretty good if ‘whatever’ is your review of a compound fracture.”

“Woohoo!”

Eddie glances at Richie’s busted arm and all the things tethering him to the wall. He would give anything to trade places, any body part, if it meant he could curl up in Richie’s arms again all cramped up in the back of the Cadillac. Maybe if they’d had more than just a few months of Billy Joel and the backseat it would have been harder to forget and he wouldn’t have made such a mess of his life in the meanwhile.

He pushes that thought to the back of his mind. He’ll actually listen to Bev and save it for the Townhouse. Right now, this is what’s important.

“I’m sorry I forgot about us,” he clarifies. He digs in his jacket pockets for his vending machine offerings. “You must have a straw here somewhere...”

“Ben stole it. I kept squirting him.”

Eddie snorts. “I’ll bet. Uhm. I was wondering. D’you remember- remember the time we returned that chair to your dad’s office?”

At first, Richie looks at the drink and gum blankly. People have probably been forcing liquid on him all day.

Eddie wets his lips. “You said you wanted me all to yourself and I-“

Richie’s eyes go wide and his good hand reaches to take the bottle, the monitor on his finger clicking against the plastic cap. He struggles to sit up but can’t really lever himself. “Eds. Eddie, you have to kiss me _ right now._”

“You remem-“

“_I don’t really have arms here!_”

“Crybaby.”

Eddie leans down and presses a light but lingering kiss to Richie’s lips. His hands thread into Richie’s hair, thumbs stroking his cheeks. It’s the best he can do while there’s still a fucking cotton ball jammed in his jaw.

Richie’s head chases him as he pulls away, as much as his weakened state will allow. “I thought I never told you. I walked around all week thinking I never...”

“I know, I know. It’s fucked up.” Eddie twists his finger into a curl behind Richie’s ear.

He tries to sit up again, jerking in an unexecuted facepalm. “We could have been dicking down at the Townhouse _ this whole time!_”

“Watch it. You’ve got tubes.”

Richie wriggles even more, trying to scoot to one side of the bed and lift his blanket. “Get up here. Just like, rub one out on me I don’t even care.”

Eddie chokes. He’s forty. How is it that he can be world weary and yet Richie can still gut punch him with like, five words? Unfair. Especially when he’d like to do things right, this time. _ Permanently_. With joint checking accounts and a dog and relatives that neither of them quite remember, but they keep on the Christmas card list, anyway. He wants to accidentally put on Richie’s shoes because he kicked them off on Eddie’s side of the bed, and have skirmishes over favorite mugs that end in passing the coffee cup back and forth, bitching about mismatched sugar preferences. He wants to love Richie until he dies getting gobbled up by a maneater plant or whatever fucking hellscape climate change brings. Certainly that deserves a better kick off than dry humping in a hospital bed.

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “Thanks but no thanks. You look and smell like a rat that crawled through a hazmat container, it’s not really doing it for me.”

As though Eddie had just showered him with compliments, Richie’s eyes twinkle. “It’s not my fault I don’t have as much practice being beautiful as you do, Eddie my love.”

If the hospital hadn't given him a blood thinner earlier, Eddie’s blush would rival Bev's hair.

“Hmm,” Eddie pretends to consider it. He gets as far as sitting on the edge of the bed and leaning down until their faces are nose to nose. “Nope!” He pulls back. “Being slick is not gonna get you out of showering before I touch you again.”

“Jokes on you, I am definitely gonna need some help in the shower.”

“And putting on your insanely hot leather jacket.” Eddie reminds him. “And driving, and carrying-“

“Insanely? Really?”

Has he really never mentioned- ? “Yeah, first time I realized I wanted to do you was thanks to a leather jacket, keep up.”

“I _ knew _ veganism was a crock.”

Eddie bites his lip. “Richie. I’ll do it, you know. The showers, the jacket. I want it all.” Somehow Richie’s glasses have gone crooked again. Eddie pokes them straight and Richie leans into his hand, undoing it. He could go back and forth like this forever. “You have to tell me right now if this is too much. This is- this is _ it _ for me. I’m gonna follow you home like a fucking puppy and require at least twice the attention.”

Richie closes his eyes and continues nuzzling into his hand. “Mmm. I’ll take it. Me too. But more like a carnivorous exotic pet. One that will get you thrown in federal jail.”

Eddie thinks. “Okay, so we can only live in Alabama, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia, or Wisconsin. Take your pick.”

“I’m downgrading to like, a peacock,” Richie coughs.

“Deal. You thirsty?”

“Yeah.” Eddie helps Richie sit up and unscrews the bottle for him.

“Know of any happening high school parties where we could grab a drink?”

Richie shoots a devilish look at Eddie over the bottle. “Only the party in my pants!”

“You’re not wearing pants right now.”

“That’s why I’m trying to get you under the covers with me.”

Eddie sighs. He gets up off the edge of the bed so he can move the blankets.

“Drink.”

-

**Author's Note:**

> Heeey I'm @stitchyarts on twitter and tumblr where I post some reddie art, including pieces for this very fic. Check it out!


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